To one of the strongest Aeldari Farseers of this era, the people of the Talon System appeared to possess neither a past nor a future.
That sounded like the sort of deliberately obscure statement Aeldari enjoyed inflicting upon other species. Ulthran, however, had meant it as a practical description of what he saw or failed to see within the skeins of fate.
The people of Talon had histories. They possessed memories, families, records, scars, debts, and consequences stretching back long before Qin Mo appeared among them. Nothing had erased their actual past.
What had been broken was the chain of fate that connected that past to the future originally awaiting them.
Qin Mo knew he was the cause.
He had not been born anywhere within this universe. His life had begun in another reality, one in which the Warhammer galaxy had existed as fiction. No obvious thread within the Immaterium led from his birth to Tyrone Hive because neither his birth nor the world that had shaped him belonged to this reality.
Farseers and other beings gifted with foresight did not simply look at a finished record of future events. They followed causes through the skeins, measuring how choices, desires, wars, accidents, and countless smaller actions might converge. Even the most uncertain prediction still depended upon the future growing from the universe's own past.
Qin Mo violated that premise merely by existing.
His arrival had introduced a cause with no origin in this universe. His knowledge came from beyond its history. His decisions were shaped by events that, from the perspective of the people around him, had not yet happened. Fate could account for the ambitions of Abaddon, the preparations of Cadia, or the ancient designs of the Aeldari. It could not reliably account for a man making choices based upon memories acquired in another universe.
Qin Mo recalled the events of the Talon Sector Unification Campaign.
Yoan, Grey, Anruida, Grot… Their original paths should have ended in the Underhive. The Genestealer uprising should have consumed them along with the abandoned regiments beneath Tyrone Hive. Their deaths had been predictable because nothing in the galaxy's original chain of events should have saved them.
Then Qin Mo had armed them, led them, reinforced their positions, and pulled them through battles they were supposed to lose.
Their original threads still led toward death. Yet the men themselves had continued living beyond those endpoints because an intruder from outside the universe had interfered. From that moment onward, every choice they made rested upon a cause the skeins had never contained.
The Shapeshifter, a C'tan shard whose limited foresight had once warned Qin Mo of dangers ahead, could perceive fragments of what might occur. Daemons could exploit possibilities within the Warp. Farseers could compare countless branching futures. Yet none of them could consistently reconstruct what followed when Qin Mo overturned the event upon which their predictions depended.
At first, the disturbance had affected only a handful of survivors. Then Qin Mo had united Talon, rebuilt its armies, transformed its industry, and altered the lives of billions. Almost every major decision within the sector now rested, directly or indirectly, upon something he had changed.
That did not make every Talon citizen individually invisible to foresight. It made futures involving Talon increasingly unreliable. The deeper a person, army, or world became entangled with Qin Mo's actions, the less closely its fate resembled the future that had once awaited it.
Nor did it make anyone immortal. Grey could still be killed by a shell. Yoan could still bleed. A warship could still burn with all hands aboard. Fate's inability to arrange or predict a death offered no protection once a weapon was already pointed at someone.
With this in mind, Qin Mo had to concede that Ulthran's reasoning possessed merit. People whose expected deaths had already been overturned and whose current actions could no longer be cleanly projected into the future, held an advantage against enemies accustomed to planning through prophecy.
"So," Ulthran said, and some of the tension left his narrow shoulders, "you understand my point."
"I understand why your predictions become unreliable around Talon," Qin Mo replied. "That does not mean I agree with whatever you intend to do about it."
His eyes narrowed at Ulthran's image on the dimensional-communications display.
"You crossed half the galaxy to explain something that I already suspected. Why? Are you trying to turn Talon into another piece in your great game?"
Ulthran's lips curled into a smile.
It was not the serene, superior smile he usually presented to outsiders. The corners of his mouth twitched upward with the expression of someone accused of a crime he had committed many times and saw no reason to regret.
Standing beside him, Saar stared openly. Surprise disturbed the disciplined stillness of his face. He had evidently watched Ulthran discuss war, extinction, and the possible destruction of entire craftworlds without displaying as much emotion as he did now.
Despite the gulf between their species, Qin Mo recognized the expression immediately. The Farseer was struggling not to laugh.
"Your understanding of my people is regrettably thorough," Ulthran said. His amusement disappeared beneath his customary cold composure. "But on this occasion, you are wrong."
Qin Mo said nothing, still eyeing Ulthran with suspicion.
"I don't want to use you as pawns, nor do I want to send you to die. Not yet, anyway," Ulthran said frankly.
The qualification hung between them. Ulthran made no attempt to retract it, and Qin Mo almost respected the honesty.
Almost.
"I came to warn you," the Farseer continued. "Whatever purpose the ritual serves, it is being prepared alongside a conventional assault. The Black Legion will strike the Cadian System, and Abaddon will bring a weapon capable of destroying worlds."
Ulthran's expression hardened.
"One of the Talismans of Vaul. The fortress your Imperium calls the Will of Eternity."
"A Blackstone Fortress," Qin Mo said.
Ulthran inclined his head. "Yes."
He did not need to explain its entire history. Qin Mo already knew the important parts. Ancient Aeldari accounts described the Blackstone Fortresses as Talismans of Vaul, weapons dating from the War in Heaven and designed to oppose the C'tan. Whether Vaul the Aeldari God of Smiths and all craftsmen had forged them personally or merely shaped older creations for that purpose was less important than what they could do.
During the Gothic War, Abaddon had captured three of the Fortresses. One was destroyed before the conflict ended; he kept the Will of Eternity and eventually gave the other survivor to Huron Blackheart, Tyrant of Badab, to secure the Red Corsairs' support.
Abaddon did not possess complete control over the structures. He could not command their full potential or reproduce the devastating conjunctions for which they had originally been designed. That limitation was only moderately reassuring. He could still annihilate fleets with the Will of Eternity, break orbital defenses, and, if necessary, turn the mass of the Fortress itself into a weapon against a planet, as he had in the original account of Cadia's fall.
Ulthran leaned closer to the transmission device beyond the display.
"I have seen the Black Legion's assault upon Cadia. When the system calls for aid, do not immediately commit your main fleet or the Celestial Engine against the Will of Eternity. Allow the Imperium's other forces to engage it first."
"Why?" Qin Mo asked.
"Because the Talisman of Vaul is not an obedient machine," Ulthran replied. "It possesses a will, fragmented, dormant, and constrained, but present. Imagine a creature held half-asleep while intruders fasten chains to its limbs and force it to fight."
His gaze settled upon Qin Mo.
"I do not know precisely what you are. I suspect even you do not yet possess a complete answer. But you wield the power of the Star Gods, and the oldest instincts remaining within the Talisman of Vaul were shaped to recognize such power as an enemy."
Ulthran raised one slender hand and pointed through the display.
"The Celestial Engine carries your imprint. It also contains a fragment of the Nightbringer. If the Talisman of Vaul senses either of you, its hatred may overcome its resistance to Abaddon's control."
That possibility seized Qin Mo's full attention.
In the original lore he remembered, Imperial forces had eventually crippled the Will of Eternity during the siege of Cadia. Mortal defenders and Astartes had paid heavily for that success, but their sacrifice had not been the only reason it worked. The ancient Fortress had never been a willing servant of Chaos. At crucial moments, it had resisted the commands forced upon it.
Even after it was disabled, its wreckage had become the weapon that broke Cadia.
Qin Mo's intervention might make that outcome better or far worse.
If the Celestial Engine confronted the Fortress too early, the Will of Eternity would be facing precisely what it had been built to destroy: C'tan-derived technology, a living wielder of Star-God power, and a captive Nightbringer shard. Instead of resisting Abaddon, it might awaken fully and cooperate with him for the sake of killing an older enemy.
That was the danger of changing fate. Preventing one disaster did not guarantee that whatever replaced it would be kinder.
"You want Imperial forces to occupy its attention first," Qin Mo said.
"I want them to test the strength of Abaddon's control without giving the Fortress a reason to support him," Ulthran corrected. "Human warships are not what it was created to hunt. You are."
"And if the Imperial attack fails?"
"Then you intervene after the Talisman has been damaged or distracted."
Ulthran offered no guarantee of success. That made the warning more credible than any confident prophecy would have been.
Qin Mo considered the tactical problem. Committing the Celestial Engine immediately would provide Cadia with its strongest reinforcement. It might also awaken the one enemy weapon most suited to destroying it. Holding the Engine back would preserve Talon's greatest asset while forcing Imperial defenders to endure the Fortress without its support.
There was no clean answer. There were only different distributions of risk.
"Your warning has some merit," Qin Mo said. "But I can only take it under advisement, nothing more."
"I figured you'd say that," Ulthran replied, placing a hand on Saar's shoulder. "If, for any reason, your forces must face the Blackstone Fortress directly, send him. He can help."
Saar straightened beneath the Farseer's hand. His expression contained none of Ulthran's amusement.
Qin Mo looked from him to Ulthran. "What can one Aeldari do against a star-fort?"
"Recognize what your instruments may not," Ulthran answered. "Saar knows the Talismans well enough to identify when the Fortress shows weakness. If an opportunity appears to cripple it from within, he may see it before your machines do."
Ulthran's hand fell from Saar's shoulder.
"I cannot promise he will save your Engine. I can promise that your chances will be worse without him."
Saar nodded, resolute. "I will serve."
Qin Mo studied him through the display.
The Aeldari were not trustworthy, but that did not mean every offer concealed an attempt at sabotage. Ulthran was probably trying to help. The survival of Cadia mattered to more than the Imperium.
If Cadia fell, the galaxy would lose far more than a fortress world. The pylon network restraining the Eye of Terror would fail, allowing the Warp rift to expand and threatening every species within reach of the resulting catastrophe.
There was no one in the galaxy who did not hate Chaos except Chaos itself, and even its servants spent much of their time hating one another.
"Come to the Talon Sector," Qin Mo said to Saar on the screen. "My people will examine what you know and incorporate you into the contingency planning."
Then he turned his attention back to Ulthran.
"But if he's useless, I'll load him into a torpedo and fire him directly at the Blackstone Fortress."
Ulthran's mouth threatened to curl upward again.
Saar's demeanor changed instantly. "You won't get the chance. Either I'll cripple the Blackstone Fortress, or I'll die trying. I did not come merely to help. I intend to take my vengeance on the Black Legion."
The force behind the words removed any doubt that Saar had volunteered of his own accord.
Qin Mo gave a short nod and cut the transmission.
....
Ten minutes later...
Ulthran and Saar had vanished from the display. In their place, the Shapeshifter's illusory projection filled the command chamber with a three-dimensional map of the Segmentum Obscurus.
The C'tan shard stood beside Qin Mo in a feminine humanoid form shaped from flowing silver metal. Reflections moved across its surface as the projection changed: burning worlds, drifting fleets, ritual sites, and the cold light of distant stars.
Intelligence from dozens of active war zones hung around them. Reconnaissance feeds, dimensional relay reports, naval auspex records, intercepted traitor transmissions, and interrogator summaries had been combined into a single theater display.
World after world had become a battlefield.
On one moon, a Chaos warband defended an excavated ritual complex despite possessing no supply base or conventional strategic objective nearby. Elsewhere, cultists slaughtered entire settlements around crude structures of fused bone, blackstone fragments, and industrial machinery. In several systems, traitor cruisers had rammed Imperial or Talon formations merely to delay them for a few more hours.
At first, the attacks had appeared erratic. Viewed together, they formed a pattern. Each ritual site was being purchased with ships, soldiers, and time on a scale no independent warband would willingly spend. Someone was coordinating them toward a single purpose.
"The Chaos Space Marine I captured spoke about the ritual," Qin Mo said. "At the time, I treated the claim with caution. Ulthran has now confirmed it, and the battlefield reports support him."
He folded his arms and studied the burning worlds.
"That changes my assessment. I expected the Black Crusade to follow roughly the same strategic course like we planned."
A cluster of ritual sites brightened around the projected Cadian Gate.
"This is something else. Abaddon is not merely preparing the battlefield. He is constructing an effect whose purpose I cannot yet model."
The lore Qin Mo remembered had never been prophecy, only a record of how events were supposed to unfold without his intervention. Every life he saved, every technology he introduced, every warning he issued, and every army he moved changed the conditions upon which that history depended.
Talon had reinforced Agripinaa. Creed had received warnings before the Volscani betrayal. Dimensional communications connected forces that should have remained isolated. The Celestial Engine existed where no such weapon had existed before.
The ritual was further evidence that the future was already diverging. Perhaps Abaddon had always intended it and the lore had simply never mentioned it. Perhaps Talon's intervention had forced the Despoiler to alter his plans. Either possibility made Qin Mo's prior knowledge less reliable.
The Shapeshifter stood motionless beside him, apparently listening with great attention. Its metallic face had settled into a thoughtful expression, and one hand rested beneath its chin.
Qin Mo waited.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"…Hmm?" The Shapeshifter blinked, clearly having zoned out rather than actually thinking.
Its gaze remained fixed upon a repeating sensor recording of a Chaos cruiser exploding. The shard appeared to have been comparing the blast from three different observation angles.
Qin Mo sighed. "I shouldn't have asked you."
The Shapeshifter inclined its head with suspicious dignity, as though the failure had been his for expecting an answer.
Qin Mo returned his attention to the projection. At a gesture, the individual battlefields contracted into fleet vectors, readiness reports, supply estimates, communication nodes, reserve positions, and timed operational orders.
This is all I can do, he thought.
It was not resignation. It was the conclusion of an audit.
The Talon Navy's main fleet was already converging upon the Obscurus Expanse through staged dimensional jumps. Forward battle groups were fighting alongside Imperial forces across multiple systems, destroying isolated warbands where possible and withdrawing before larger Chaos formations could pin them in place. Repair ships, ammunition carriers, medicae transports, and mobile fabrication vessels followed behind them according to schedules recalculated every time a front shifted.
The Celestial Engine remained in the Agripinaa System. Its reactors were active, its weapons supplied, and its embarked forces held at combat readiness. Keeping it there continued to protect the forge world while preventing Abaddon from learning where Talon intended to commit its greatest weapon.
Ulthran's warning changed the conditions governing its deployment, but not its mission.
If Cadia issued a distress call, the Celestial Engine would enter immediate transition readiness. It would not jump blindly into the center of the Cadian System. Talon reconnaissance, Imperial battle reports, and Saar's assessment would first determine the position and condition of the Will of Eternity.
The Blackstone Fortress required its own layered contingencies.
The first relied upon restraint. Imperial and Astartes forces would engage the Will of Eternity before the Celestial Engine exposed itself. Saar would be brought to Talon, questioned, tested, and assigned to the command staff analyzing the Fortress. If he identified a moment of weakness, Talon strike forces would exploit it.
Qin Mo disliked any plan that depended upon other soldiers absorbing the first blow. Yet sending the Celestial Engine forward too soon might strengthen the enemy and cost even more lives. Discomfort did not make the tactical reality disappear.
If the initial assault failed, the Celestial Engine would engage the Will of Eternity directly. Its long-range weapons, gravitic defenses, and dimensional mobility gave it a chance against a structure built to fight Star Gods. A chance was not a guarantee, but war rarely offered guarantees.
If the Engine could not destroy it at range, Qin Mo could deploy his necrodermis Avatar through a boarding strike and attempt to cripple its control systems from within.
If that also failed, the sealed fragment of the Nightbringer remained aboard the Engine. Releasing it would amount to setting one ancient reality nuke against another. Qin Mo would authorize that only if Cadia's destruction had otherwise become unavoidable.
Every option carried danger. Saar might fail. The Fortress might awaken. The Avatar might be destroyed. The Nightbringer might become more difficult to contain than the weapon it had been released to fight. The ritual might render every carefully prepared response obsolete.
Qin Mo examined the deployment map one final time. There was nothing else he could change without weakening another front or gambling lives on information he did not possess.
He didn't know what the ritual would do or how Abaddon would use it.
But Qin Mo had already done everything within his power.
.....
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